Odds, Ends, and Debts
by milkmoth
Summary: A series of KyouHaru oneshots, in no particular order, reality, or universe. Done by request on LJ. Most recent: 5: Bloodlove. Two words: Vampire Kyouya. Discontinued.
1. Wife in Waiting

a/n: _Debts _is going to be a series of KyouHaru oneshots, done by request on LJ (the KyouHaru community! Spread the luv! 3). I'm definitely going to do the first ten, but may do even more than that. I'm sorry if these turn out a bit sloppy – I've been pressed on time lately.

_chapter one request: AU, possibly samurai_

Not samurai-era, but still kind of traditional Japanese. I'm sorry that there's a distinct lack of research and historical detail. I warn you in advance, although I tried.

Enjoy? Review. : )

* * *

She worried every day. 

His mind was sharp, oh, she would give _that _to her demon-of-a… she wasn't really comfortable with saying it, even now. It had been arranged, and she had been thoroughly opposed to the whole idea of an arranged marriage, protesting that it was _archaic_ and _unnecessary,_ but now, only now that he was gone, did she realize that her consent may have come from somewhere other than her brain alone.

She should be proud, she supposed. She supposed that she should wish on him a heroic death. But she was selfish, or maybe just sensible, and she wanted him to come back alive.

* * *

The first thing she noticed was that he wore spectacles. 

How very _Western, _she thought, with a kind of fascinated interest. The first spark that he may actually prove to her liking.

She bowed, she seated herself at the table in a way that was polite but not as respectful as her father, sitting next to her, would have liked.

He and his father sat on the other side of the table.

The matchmaker, with her puckered, red lips, looked back and forth and suddenly, her mouth broke into a smile.

"I think it will be good," she said aloud.

The boy caught her eye and looked bored. Well, too bad. She was just as bored as he. She thought, idly, that her nose itched. Should she scratch it? Would he find it offensive?

Eh, who cared? She scratched it, albeit daintily.

She noticed his father give her a _look.

* * *

_

It had been an advantageous match, no doubt. She was a girl from a small-town family, with a widower father who worked a simple job. Her mother had come from a line of moderate prestige, but had shamed her family by marrying low. Perhaps her mother's actions were the reasons that Haruhi held (relatively) so little regard for her society's ideals.

_He _was heir to a line indirectly linked to the Emperor's own, a few places away but related to a Duke. On his own merit, he was not the typical son of nobility. He was a third son, and to be as successful as he was, he had to be cagey, just like his father. He had wisely invested in a company clever enough to mimic Western practices and yet pass them off as traditional, Japanese, and brilliant.

He was sharp, her demon-of-a-husband. She had no doubts that he would come back home safely, and yet she worried every day.

"He had better not leave me a widow," she told her father, who was too old to join the draft.

"I'm sure he's using his brains to figure out everything he can about the West, don't worry. He'll come back and make you an even richer wife." Her father stifled a smile. "A young man as talented as Kyouya-sama won't die… but are you afraid that he'll find another girl while he's there?"

For some reason, the thought hadn't even crossed her mind. And it fails to nag at her even today.

* * *

She had always wondered why he had sought her, of all girls. She was sometimes called _kawaii; _she was not considered a _bijin._ She was not exceptionally pretty – not the kind of storybook pretty that brought princes in flocks to seek her courtship. Not the kind of pretty that made boys so rich and eligible work so hard to take her back to their big, rich family homes. 

That wasn't what she wanted, anyway. What she _wanted _was an education – a classical education, one of philosophy and history and linguistics. One of astronomy, and mathematics. She was thirsty for knowledge, and her father's trickling income couldn't satisfy that thirst.

Of course, she had gone to grade school, and her father, on behalf of her well-educated mother, had even paid for some secondary schooling. But Haruhi wanted more, _more._

'_More'_ was difficult for a woman to attain. Her father bought her lessons, but she'd proved hopeless at every femine art he'd tossed at her. Tea? No. Instruments? They were foreign objects, no better than a blunt knife, in Haruhi's hands. Singing?

Don't even go there.

Eventually he had despaired of ever having her 'educated', and had given up. She was content enough to take care of her father and the house (cooking and cleaning, though not formal, were her only skills).

Then, her father had come home (suspiciously) excited one night. He revealed, giddily, that she had been offered a place in the Ohtori household. A wife of a third son, but an Ohtori none the less.

* * *

"Why?" she asked Ohtori Kyouya. 

He glanced at her out of the corners of his lenses.

"Your family was somewhat noble, on your mother's side. I'm only a third son. My father thought that the match would be advantageous, and a way to repay your great-grandfather for a life favor granted to mine."

She sighed.

Another woman might have shrilled a scream of anguish, or hit him, or started crying, or walked away. But Haruhi was practical, and much as she hated to admit she was worried, she had to admit that this was necessary.

She wasn't appreciating his mind games, though.

"I'm not asking why you married me, although thank you for finally answering that ques–"

"You were different."

The crickets chirped a little in the cool night air. A breeze swept across their skin, across her bare feet and across the porch, and the wind chime gave a faint jingle. Their tea had long gone cold.

"So that's the reason?"

"Yes."

"I was _different._"

"Yes."

"How would you know?"

"You were strong enough to hold yourself and your widower father together, even while you both were grieving over your mothers' death. I know that even now you are. I know that you wanted an education." He picked up his cup, made a deep inhale of the cold tea, and for a moment she thinks he'll drink, but he continues. "I wasn't enthusiastic about the marriage at first, but when I actually met you, I knew it would prove more… profitable than I'd originally imagined."

She blinked. She stared down at her tiny bare feet.

"Oh."

She was far from offended. More like a little caught-off-guard, pleasantly so.

"To answer your question: I have to."

She supposed she knew that. She supposed she'd just wanted to hear that it wasn't solely to leave her.

He put his arms around her. Even though it wasn't cold, she found she had goose bumps.

* * *

And so life went on without him. 

Life went on, week by week, and two weeks after his departure she found out.

This was the point at which she worried. She worried for her husband, in a way that was more consuming and draining than worrying for one's friend or brother or even her own father (thank the gods that _both _of them hadn't had to go. Thank the _gods _neither of them were dead. Yet.).

She continued with her studies, and she learned and she found that even though it had been years, she could still remember he kanji and her mind was still sharp and quick.

A month later, she was throwing up every morning.

She continued to visit her father, and she continued to do her daily chores. She continued to chat with the other women in the town. People were dying, and all Haruhi could hope was, _I hope it's not Kyouya. _

Three and a half months later, it began to show. Just a little. It wouldn't be much if it weren't for the fact that she was so small, so thin.

She continued to be herself. She was practical. She didn't want anyone to worry about her. There was so much to worry about already, bigger, more important things. The war. She was slightly annoyed, already, by her father's wariness.

Because hewould be sure to notice.

And three and a half months and two days later, he did.

"_You're pregnant,"_ he said, and his eyes went huge and a smile spread across his face like honey.

"Yes," she replied testily.

Not testy with the fact that she was pregnant (she was already attached to her… to their baby). Just with her father and his meddling, although she supposed it had done her good before.

* * *

The day approached and, as trying as the whole ordeal was, she was very pleased when she actually held her baby. 

Hee was just a baby, but he had very dark hair.

And that day, while Haruhi smiled and held her newborn, other women's sons died.

--

Kyouya returned to her two years later. Alive.

She had just walked out the door, for her now-daily visit to her father. Hiroto's tiny, tiny pale hand held hers.

Suddenly, Hiroto jerked his hand from Haruhi's and ran ahead to the gate. This surprised her at first, because he was not an active, bouncy child. He was quiet, still; sharp for his age in a way that Haruhi never was.

Haruhi looked up and found her husband standing at the gate.

She smiled. "You're home."

He snorted. "Thank the gods."

She walked to him, could hear Hiroto's _who is this man?_ faintly in the background, the sound dimmed by her own breathing.

"Your father," she explained.

"_Otou-sama_," Hiroto repeated pleasantly. He gave Kyouya another look, and a rare, timid smile.

"You had a child," he noted. _Our child. _

"I would have told you, but you left no way to contact you."

He sniffed in distaste. "They didn't treat me with very much respect."

"Rich bastard," she said, softly as though maybe if it was soft Hiroto wouldn't hear. "You couldn't expect to be treated like a _prince _on the warfront." She was still smiling.

He smirked despite himself, but she noticed with a tinge of fear (just a tinge) that there was something dark in his eyes. "Tragedy is heading our way," he told her.

"More than all the husbands already dead?"

"Bigger, I think."

"And how would you know?"

"I feel it." He paused. "The end is coming."

"What should we do?" And her practical voice was back, her big brown eyes calmly meeting his.

He kissed her forehead, the second time he had shown her an unusual display of affection.

"We'll weather it. Things are changing."

"Things will never change," she said. She knew things would change. She was just being sentimental.

But it helped to steady her, and so did Kyouya's presence.

They would make it through.


	2. in those days: prologue

_a/n_: So, time for prompt two! _Vampire Kyouya. _I'm sure that whoever requested this wanted a smexy Kyou vampire (aaaaah 3) but I think I really, really ended up taking this somewhere else. I present to you... _Bloodlove - pt 1. _Yes, this longshot is so long that I've divided it into three parts. Part two is actually up on my LJ comm, but I'll be posting it here shortly. In the meantime, enjoy part one! Part three will be finished ASAP, but I have a lot to work on lately, sooo... eh.

* * *

He would never forget the way she looked, although at that point it was hardly even really _her _anymore.

He was expecting some decomposition – that was reasonable, that was practical, that was normal. That was going to make him queasy, but when they forced him to open her tomb, it was the best thing he could hope for.

He didn't quite expect to see her small, small, delicate body the way it was now. He didn't expect to see her smooth, pale skin like this.

(He didn't expect to the most beautiful, precious thing in his world, the woman he _loved_…)

He didn't expect to see half-dried blood gushed out of her nose, smeared around her mouth. His blood was pumping. His heart was beating madly.

(… he didn't expect her like _this_…)

He saw that her face was red and flushed, morbidly drunk. A tick. Gorged on blood. _That_ was what she looked like. Nothing like she had been in life. She was undead, a demon, no longer even human. His wife. A monster. Logic said no, that such a thing couldn't be, his heart said no, that his wife could never be…

And yet, an exhausting emotion grabbed at him and shook him till his heart shook, too, in his chest.

(_She had bled in life. Consumption. He remembered it all too well. She had always been pale, small, but never so fragile as in those last months. She had coughed up blood, right into her delicate, lacy handkerchief embroidered with his family's seal. She would make a face with annoyance. But, 'I'm not sick,' she would assure in him in a lie. _

_Consumption, they'd said._

_The village had insisted different.)_

They burned her heart, after that.

They made him drink the ashes mixed with water, and the only thing he could be grateful for was that he had not been forced to cut out it out himself.

He thinks the ashes turned his heart black, after that.

And, funniest of all, he had a strange, hollow desire to _fix it._

* * *

He had been a wealthy business man, despite being a third son. He had been a lover for a year, and then, for only three months, he had been a husband, as well.

In the first month of their marriage, a brother, his second-eldest, and a doctor, had come for holiday out in the country, in order to breathe the country air. He had always been frail, the second-youngest, and had been naïve enough to say, _I want to save people _when choosing his career.

Kyouya's career, on the other hand, was highly successful. He had to travel to work (business), quite a distance, to get to the city. He went every week, spent (he saw in retrospect) too little time with her, but at the time he thought it was worth it. She liked the countryside, even though she didn't say it, and Kyouya had hopelessly hoped that the air would do her good.

This brother's presence not only irritated Kyouya – who was not fond of his siblings, save for his gentle, fumbling, pretty sister – but it also created great inconvenience.

Because his doctor, his idiotic, _damned _brother, the so-called _doctor, _caught her consumption.

And died.

(Kyouya mourned, oh, yes, of course he did, and he cried. He realized that he had loved his stupid brother more than he had thought. He grieved, yes, but this was before he knew that this death would cost him what he held most valuable.)

And another villager, and another, and soon they were dropping like flies, all hacking up blood before burning up with fever. And she, _she, _was somehow still alive and was looking paler and gaunter, and the shadows under her eyes darkened, shadows that grow longer and sharper in the dusk.

"I'm dying," she said, matter-of-factly, one day.

He smiled at her, wanly. The look in his eyes was more hardened than a smile should belie.

"So you've finally stopped denying it."

"I was never really… denying it. I just thought maybe it would go away."

For the rest of the day, she wouldn't talk to him. But not so much out of anger as out of inner-turmoil, the futile fight to reconcile one's life with one's self.

She was only twenty-two.

* * *

"You should probably leave town."

She was wringing her handkerchief in her hands and had refused the food and drink he had offered her. His gentle, fumbling, pretty sister. She was well-dressed as always, out-of-place in this little rural area, almost as out of place as his home. She could have been another doll at a tea party, but the life in her eyes gave her away.

He stared her down. Her gentle eyes did not waver.

"What do you mean by that?"

It was not in his usual roundabout way, although he supposed he knew the answer.

"The town's people are suspect, angry. She was one of them, they had all accepted-"

"Don't say her name."

She picked up on her brother's terse tone, fidgeted, and then continued.

"- and then they would have had her killed, if she had not died herself. And still, the people, they were dying from that disease, it was spreading like wildfire – she may not even have been the first one to have it, you know, it could have been that family, you know, the ones with all the children who are always–"

"Fuyumi. It doesn't matter anymore. She's dead. All right, they hate me." He stood. "I suppose I'll leave the village, then." She can hear the bitterness in his voice. "And what will I do with this house, then?"

"Sell it?"

He laughed, and she flinched under her bonnet.

"There's no one who would buy a manor like this one when it's so far from the village square. There's no one who would buy such an expensive house in such an unsophisticated village. A village loses its quaint charm when it's being near-decimated by disease."

She looked at him sadly.

"It wouldn't sell for anything," he says shortly, tiredly, suddenly losing his taste for the bitter, "but I'll leave it. For somewhere else."

It was practical, it was fact, it is _him, _after all.

But for that same reason the truth went unspoken: it smelled of her, it was built for her, it was a part of her and them that he can hold.

She smiles. "Stay safe, Kyouya."

He hugged his sister goodbye. She climbed into the carriage and, in her tea-doll dress, waving until she's out of view, she goes back to the city to be a good socialite wife.

It's the last time he ever saw her.

He genuinely hopes that her life was better than his is.


	3. two: the blur leading up to

_a/n_: _Bloodlove _continues. Haruhi will appear next chapter, and then you will get your smexy vampires and semi-happy ending (as happy as can be for such an angsty threeshot).

Remember to leave reviews. They feed my plotbunnies - er, my soul.

* * *

Kyouya will excel at whatever he chooses to do.

It is not a promise.

It is not something printed purely for dramatic effect.

It is a fact.

He may be a businessman, but he has been well-trained in the sciences over the years; and so with the rest of his wealth he finds himself an oddity: he returns to the university. And he studies some more.

He disappears.

He leaves an address, actually, for wherever residence he is at. But his father, disgraced at his son's desertion of family morals, business, and materialism, is not pleased and does not try to find him. His sister is not informed of his location.

And when the university has nothing left to teach him, and he's grown bored and antsy (he's a clever one, and short on patience) he goes on to speak with top scholars.

Low on money, he refuses to sell the old house. He is twenty-five and flat-out broke, penniless but for a beautiful, deserted estate. He is still a perfect gentleman with a nose that is finely upturned, no matter how sorely he misses the sound of coins jingling in his pockets, or the tick of his golden pocket watch. He does not sell the estate.

* * *

He is twenty-seven. He is becoming confident in his scientific ability. Very confident, actually. Smug, almost, comfortable. He expands his scientific studies into the paranormal.

He receives a letter from his family's attorney. His father has died – young – of cardiac arrest. His eldest brother will be inheriting most of it. There is also a large sum for Kyouya. He was not disowned after all! Will he come to claim it?

Kyouya sits down, fills up his ink-well pen, and for the first time he replies:

Yes, thank you.

But he will not be able to claim it, and will they please place it into a bank account?

And, as an afterthought:

How is his sister doing?

(Kyouya has so very little patience when it comes to being poor. Being poor is for people far less gifted than he.)

* * *

The family lawyer agrees; Kyouya arranges to get his hands on the money. It is more than he had thought. The feel of notes in his hands is more fulfilling than he had imagined. At this point, only vengeance and his dead wife's touch could feel better.

The lawyer includes one sentence about Fuyumi. It says: Your sister is well, with a new child on the way. There is no more and no less. Kyouya reminds himself that he is talking to a lawyer, another business man. It is no more and no less than he expected, and yet he reads the sentence so many times that is burned into his memory.

He buys himself an apartment in an Austrian city, where he will be one of many. It is small, because he knows, deep down, that he will not be living there for very long.

He is twenty-eight. He decides: he has sufficient funds, he has sufficient knowledge. The time now is the time. He has dissected, he has examined, he has studied, he has interviewed the experts – and now is the time.

* * *

There is blood in it. A lot of blood. A lot of mixes. Very specific ones. That of fresher human corpses, and that of a South American bat. That of living humans. (Humans who were… not right. Who looked too much like his dead wife for his tastes, but who had a different, freakish glint to their eyes and teeth.)

He feels his heart slow at the idea of having this in his bloodstream, at the repercussions.

He brings the thought of his wife to the forefront of his mind, and slides the needle into his a vein in his neck.

It hurts, but he is too precise to cry out.

* * *

The next day, when he wakes up, he feels something funny as he breathes, as he cleans his teeth, as he eats his breakfast. It's a very strange feeling, almost heavy.

He feels for his pulse.

It isn't there.

He waits, for a long minute, for ten minutes.

Finally, he feels one beat.

He is not sure if his heart stopped beating after that, or if it continues to beat very slowly. Though he is part scientist, he has never wanted to know.

Other than that, it's very gradual.

Very, very much so. It takes years for him to see it. And that's when he sees it.

He should be thirty-five –should have spotted a gray hair, have worse eyesight, simply looked different.

But he does not look or feel older than twenty-eight.

He also notices that his teeth are a little sharper.

* * *

"I think it would be very suited to your tastes, sir."

Kyouya smiles, a devil's smile, a small, charming, evil smile. His smile.

"And what do you think my tastes are, Mr.Barry?"

The real-estate dealer looks at Kyouya warily. "You want the truth?"

Kyouya shrugs. Elegant as always. The little smile remains. He is also calculated. Amused.

"You're a wealthy bachelor, with a sensible, smart dressing style. But too quiet to want company, much less that of a woman."

Kyouya's smiles. Innocently, almost. His teeth, the dealer notices nervously, are pointed (a bit), and he wonders if he might just be dealing with the devil.

"Yes, on that point you're right. I don't want the company of any women. I want a quiet life alone. I actually own a manor in Hungary, although it must be in ruins by this point."

The dealer comes closer, intrigued. "Forgive me sir, but I do international business. If you need someone to –"

"No, no, that won't be necessary." His clipped tone warns the dealer not to come closer.

The dealer is enough of a business man to know when 'no' means 'no'. He changes the topic.

"You can move in next week if you want it. It's in shape to function already."

"Do you have a contract with you?"

The dealer blinks.

"I would like to see the contract, please."

The dealer hastily pulls it out of his briefcase.

Kyouya reads it over carefully. He stands there for ten minutes, reading it. The dealer begins to feel even more nervous.

"I'll take it."

He signs.

"You – you don't want a lawyer or-?"

Kyouya opens his own briefcase. Stacks and stacks of pounds flash before the dealer. He gapes. Kyouya hands him the briefcase.

The dealer counts it up, greedily, hungrily, disbelievingly. Kyouya watches him with distaste.

"Excuse me, but I need you out of my house. Now."

The dealer leaves with a quick, _Thank you for you business, Mr. Ohtori_, and he does not come back.

Kyouya looks out the window. He stands in his empty apartment.

_Do I really look that young?_ he thinks, both wryly and with disgust.

I do, he answers himself. It's been years.

In his homeland, in his village, he is certain, the rumors will still run wild. But there is nothing they can legally do now to any poor woman dying of consumption. They cannot make her poor husband drink the ashes of her heart.

Truthfully, Kyouya is about a hundred and seventy years old.

He still looks twenty-eight, but his wife is dead; his sister, his brother, his mother, cousins, and friends, all of those townspeople: all dead. They have been buried in the ground, and he can hardly imagine his gentle, fumbling, pretty sister – nearly his age – rotting away in her tomb.

But then, he could not imagine his beautiful, precious wife that way, either.

(It was natural, you know. Her decomposition, that is. A hundred and seventy years of study had taught him long, long ago that science offered a warm, welcome explanation to his wife's unusual post-death condition.

* * *

He moves, and he moves fairly often.

It is not as though he has any neighbors who take particular notice of his appearance, but nonetheless, it is only logical that one must move.

He stays in Britain, for the most part. At least, he stays away Eastern Europe for another hundred years or so, until the word 'vampire' is something that children fling around for a cheap fright. They don't taste the word's muck when they say it. Because they have never seen or tasted what he has.

Years past, hard economic times pass; all the while, Kyouya (or whatever name he plays by, at that time) grows richer and richer. He has always been clever, he has always been discreet. He succeeds in stock, just as he has succeeded in science and business. He has always been tricky, and so he is able to keep up the barrage of new identities without anyone the wiser.

His game would amuse him sometimes, if he weren't so bored.

And lonely.

It has never occurred to him that he could reunite with her in death, because if it had he might have tipped over the brink and finally stick a crucifix into his own heart.

(Then again, he might be headed to hell at this point.)

* * *

Many, many years pass.

They are all the same.

Except he has realized something: he craves blood, and he can only be satiated by that of humans.

So for those many, many years he will find a new one. It gets worse and worse, until it's necessary to find new prey every six months. At the very most.

It's not like he can just ignore the craving. It is hungry and all-consuming. If he ignores it, it will swallow him up, and he is sure (based on his hypotheses) that he will either age rapidly and die, or go crazy and turn into something worse than a monster.

But those are no problems, because it's very easy, really. It's always a girl. Kyouya finds them the easiest to lure into the dark. Of charms, looks, and money, Kyouya is not lacking. These three traits are enough to get pretty, rosy-cheeked girls (they taste the best) into his bedroom, and from there it's very easy to take what he needs.

It is sad, really, how some of the girls follow him into the dark, giggling coquettishly at whatever might pass his lips. They annoy him, but at that point he can practically taste their steely-sweet blood, and is loathe to stop before he gets his fix.

It is even sadder when the girls are shy and honest, when they blush and are genuinely swept away by his words and smirks.

He always keeps them on the verge of death, allowing them to live if they are strong enough. But it takes more and more blood to drink his fill, and it becomes harder and harder to restrain. There is no way that he could have a steady source, and so he roams, finding a new source (girl) every few months.

Sadistically, he finds more and more pleasuring in trapping innocent and more innocent girls.

Right down the ones he aids in scholarship.


	4. Waltzing in Stilts

a/n: The day after I decided to take this prompt, what happened but… Pride and Prejudice aired on TV. And, much to my surprise, I _loved _it. I know my adaption isn't exactly faithful, but it's… inspired? It ended up in a completely different direction - it was originally going to be witty/fluffy, and it ended up kind of ominous. _Fox Hunting _should have a better ending for them, though, if you like P&P and happy endings.

This is set before the dissolution of the host club that's currently at the forefront of the story.

I wrote this a long while ago. I fail at prompts – Ouran's out of my system, which makes it even harder to write these characters IC, which is already such a challenge and such a vital part of KyouHaru and fic in general. I hope you enjoy it anyway, and comment if you like it!

_(EDIT: TENSE! It screwed me over again! I'll change it later, I swear. Please ignore that particular fault for now. I'm sorry!)_

* * *

From across the room she searches frantically for some sort of life preserver. Her heels are killing her, her legs feel bare in the skirt. Hikaru, Kaoru, Hunny, Mori, anybody. Anybody except Tamaki. _Help, please._

This charity ball is a nightmare. A disaster. Renge has already asked her if she's into cross-dressing, and numerous others have wondered, amazed, if she was not Fujioka Haruhi… excuse me, Fujioka Haruhi's cousin? Why, they looked exactly the same! And, could she tell them, did Haruhi-kun ever mention any of them? (Girls ask this most.)

This was not only an excruciatingly painful and uncomfortable social situation, it was teetering on the brink of overly conspicuous. Of discovery. How very Tamaki, to risk everything for one night in a pink dress! Mei has given her multiple glares, as if to say, Don't you dare complain about the dress I made you. It's not _Mei's _dress that's the trouble, it's dresses in general.

She finally spots something familiar, and her heart beats faster with relief for a split-second before she realizes, Oh. It's _Kyouya, _schmoozing and smiling, speaking in a voice clear and firm enough that she can hear it even where she is. He looks at ease and charming, charming all of the parents into believing that every cent of their daughters' inheritances (now in the host club's hands) was rightfully spent. He, she thinks desperately, will see sense. On the dress matter, at least.

She begins to walk toward him, unsteady in her heels. "Do you need help?" Mei mumbles aloud, slack-jawed at Haruhi's total lack of fluency with such a staple of femininity.

"I'm okay," she grits out, dragging each foot like it's been crippled with a battle wound.

Mei finally processes the situation instead of focusing on the fact that Haruhi Should Not Wear Heels Ever Again, and she walks slowly beside her stumbling companion.

Haruhi pauses her stumbling for a moment to take a closer look at Kyouya. "He looks miserable," she says. She resumes her stumbling.

"Well," Mei said, a little bitter and unhappy at being dragged to another disappointingly un-fun luxury event (and secretly surprised at Haruhi's sudden moment of perception) "He's not poor, at least. Rich people can afford to be mis-" Haruhi, distracted from her steps, chose this moment to fall almost face-forward into the floor. _Almost _ meaning that she fell into Kyouya instead.

"Excuse me," she mumbled, as Mei apologized profusely to the couple Kyouya had been talking to. Kyouya pulled her up and gave her a blank look, then a smile.

"Poor girl," he apologized the couple, as he held her up on her heels. His grip on her arm a little too tight, a leash for her. She chaffed at it. "She's our scholarship student's cousin. You know, the student I was telling you about. Excuse us for a moment."

"I hope you were telling them good things," she gritted out, even more agitated as he led her away.

"I was telling them how our club is not as exclusive as some might say."

"Promotion," she sighed. "Do you ever do anything besides selling the host club?"

He looked at her out the side of his glasses. "Would it surprise you if I said no?"

She knew the answer was yes, but most of the time she tended to forget it.

She sighed again and leaned against the wall, knees shaking on her heels. "I don't understand all these people." Her eyes glazed over as she stared out at the throng, through the balcony windows. "They're all so..."

"Artificial?"

She slid her eyes from the party to him and back again. "Exactly." She paused. "I'm surprised you can put on such a nice face for them. You're not a very sociable person, I think."

"It's easy when you've grown up just as artificial as them," he shrugged.

Haruhi thought about this for a moment, staring at the artificial plant in the corner. It was pretty, she supposed. She had some herbs, at home, but they were little things, practical, not meant to be pretty. But, she thought, some of them were. She was so distracted by this train of thought that she almost missed the clicking of Kyouya's blackberry keys. He looked up at her, up and down.

"You look very good tonight. Who might I thank?" He said it appraisingly, like he approved of one of his investments.

"Mei, I suppose."

A smile quirked at his lips. "Or your father."

"He tried to put lipstick on me."

"I think that would be ill suited to you. But I suppose if you were doing what suited you, you would be home in your ratty, holey sweat pants, wouldn't you?" He smiled. A joke. Between friends.

"Yes, I would be. And I like those sweat pants." She sighed. "I suppose you're no help to me, Kyouya-senpai. If you'll excuse me, I have to try and find something to cling to for the next hour or so."

She headed for the glass doors, and he watched her as she left, moving like a duck on stilts. No breeding at all. A laugh escaped despite himself – he curtailed it as soon as he realized it. But no one heard. It was night, he was alone on the balcony, and no one could hear.

He looked back down at the Blackberry, lying in his hands like a primitive tool. The email on the screen would make most people's heads spin – for him, it is legal jargon that he understands well enough, and business jargon that reads to him like a native tongue.

He closes the email without a reply and goes to the club funds. This goes beyond management, right into something else, and he knows it.

Haruhi Fujioka's debt would never be paid. He made sure of it. The vase was worth a large sum. But, looking at it, all suddenly felt very bleak. It stopped being a mere debt, a mere folly, long ago. It stopped after two zeroes lost and three gained. It stopped after he felt how sharp her tongue , how small her wrist, how large her heart, how soft her sentiment.

And now it was something more. When he calculates it perfectly, it tells him how long this all will last. And now it's worthless. Tamaki's grandmother is aware, he knows, and Haruhi is aware and he is aware – and it is all gone to hell, as far as he's concerned, the whole tidy affair in one big mess.

He slips the Blackberry into his suit jacket, ready to rejoin the party, but before he steps forward there is the slightest creak from the glass doors (someone really needs to oil that) and it's Haruhi there. He pauses, freezing completely, but he's sure she can't see that.

"Do you like to dance?

"Not if I can help it."

She looks at him with a grim resignation. It looks to him as though she is preparing to craft her own coffin or some equally hideous thing. Perhaps it's only the heels.

"You can add another zero to my debt if you want but please –"

Kyouya smirks – trying to hide the inevitable - and holds out his hand.

"I can lead… unless you'd prefer, Haruhi."

She gives him a look that says she regrets this headache already.

"All right then."

"Why not ask Hunny? Or Mori?" Her hand is warm in the crook of his arm.

"I think this'll annoy Tamaki more."

She's caught on at last.

"No zero then. I think we can agree on that point." He paused delicately. "You're not trying to make him jealous, are you?"

She looks surprised.

"I just want him off my back. I don't... I don't want to see him tonight."

She sounds honest. He shouldn't be surprised - Haruhi is always honest. So unlike him.

"I see."

His hand hovers over her waist when they dance, not-quite-touching. She's the clumsiest dancer he's ever had the boon of pairing with, but the brush of his fingertips against the cloth of her dress occupies him well enough. Right, left, right left. A heel right into his toe, which he returns with a tight, ominous smile. The waltz. It always ends where it begins. And no one will ever realize that he went right and left with her.

And it is probably for the best. He feels these things against his better judgment.

But he lets his fingers linger a little too long on her waist, allows them to really rest there, if only for one second that can't be.

She looks up at him and gives him a small smile, a smile between begrudging friends, and he smirks back and removes his hand from her waist.

He remains completely baffled as she walks away, trying his best, again, to puzzle out what this common girl makes him feel, and how long it can possibly last.


	5. three: the blood pool

a/n: This is turning out way long. I feel like I should've just made it its own story, but since I've already started under _Debts _I think I'll keep it here. Enjoy? Review? I love reviews. Especially long ones.

Also? Tense. It hates me. As does this format at the moment.

* * *

What's a man to do? After all, Kyouya has to eat.

(Well, he's not really a _man_ anymore, but he overlooks this. He has never felt less alive, but he is still going, and the fact remains: He has to eat.)

The scholarship girls are always poor, sweet things and some of them remind him of Fuyumi. Except for the 'poor'. He's kicked to the curb the part of him that feels bad, that insists that he could hire a prostitute for less money than these earnest, hardworking girls who have tried their best to succeed by the rules. Perhaps it's for that that he _enjoys_ machinating their deaths. Innocent, stupid girls. Playing by the rules – maybe they deserve it.

If his wife deserved it, he, of all people, deserves this existence, deserves to kill, and deserves the punishment that awaits him in hell (if he ever gets there).

He is informed one year, by e-mail (how things have changed, and how strange that he has embraced it) that this year's scholarship student goes by the name of Fujioka Haruhi – or Haruhi Fujioka, if he prefers. She is coming to New England, his newest place of residence (he migrated to America from England fifty years ago), to study at an Ivy League school and become an attorney. All the way from Japan – my, my. He immediately pens her a letter in his old-fashioned, cramped scrawl, inviting her to visit with him at a good restaurant. Some of the girls are resistant to his charms, but it usually starts this way. Sometimes he meets their friends, instead, and eventually preys on them or their friends or their friends' maids' nieces; after all, it wouldn't look good to make a pattern out of the girls he takes. Someone would start to notice. All the disappearances, all the pale, drained corpses – that they were all scholarship students who were aided by Kyouya Ohtori.

That would do him no good. He does not think of himself as a, well, whatever they call it nowadays – serial killer. He doesn't want his face plastered over televisions; he doesn't want to spend life in prison. He's a simple man. No, fame doesn't suit him. Wouldn't be practical for him. It would be to be found out, either way. Even with a good attorney and a not-guilty verdict, disappearing would be a headache that no newfangled painkiller would ease (not that he literally _gets _headaches, anymore, being as they are related to the bloodflow).

He writes the last line of his note in katakana, if only to impress her:

_I hope to see you soon. _

And then, his flourishing scrawl, with the capital letters large and cramped and looming over the little strings that form his name:

_Kyouya Ohtori. _

* * *

Haruhi Fujioka brushed her untidy brown bangs out of her face. Her right contact shifted in her eye and she had to blink rapidly to get it set again. She scrunched her eyebrows and tried to concentrate once more on the piece of paper – it was parchment, really – that she held.

She knew her scholarship had something to do with a Kyouya Ohtori, some wealthy, foreign, well-traveled man. She had never expected to speak to him or see him. There had been no stipulations made, and she expected that money would be given to her education and that would be the end of their interaction.

In fact, she was more than perplexed – she was a little bit _wary _that he had sent her this letter. From the rich, creamy paper, the blotty black pen, and the mysterious nature of this man, she felt vaguely repulsed. Was he flashing around his wealth, trying to paint himself as some modern-day Daddy Longlegs?

Or maybe she was jaded. About men, about people. About people with money. Maybe it wasn't too out of the question that he really just wanted to meet with the student he gave this scholarship to.

She sighed, brushing her bangs out of her face again with her free hand. She had to get them trimmed.

She put down the letter. Dinner, tomorrow night, at some restaurant Haruhi had never heard of. She knew she'd only been in America a couple of months, but she still knew about the Pasta House and the Olive Garden and she knew this was _not_ one of those. Judging from the rich paper, that said, ever-so-subtly _I am Rich and you are not_, they were probably meeting at the flashiest resturaunt in town. She read the name again. She was fairly confident it was French, and that she would be unable to pronounce any of the food on the menu.

Haruhi wanted to kick at one of her mostly-unpacked suitcases .

_Rich bastard. _

* * *

Kyouya lightly traced the rim of his wine glass with his thumb. In the restaurant dim, chic lighting, it shone red as blood.

He sipped it, now scanning the room with his dark, spectacled eyes. The taste of the wine was nowhere near as satisfying as the liquid it resembled, although even he, with his dead taste buds, could tell that it would have been a nice '52. That had been a good year for him. He indulged in a moment of fond remembrance for the dear girl he'd taken that year – she'd been a girl impressed with wine, from a good French family, and when he drank her, he thought he could almost taste it in her veins.

He leaned back in his chair. The wine sloshed in his stomach, but he carefully masked the unpleasant, near-nauseous sensation.

A waiter said something, and he heard. He felt tempted to look over his shoulder, almost salivating at the thought of the girl to come. He could imagine her – long hair, perhaps, dark eyes, pale skin. It had been a long time since he'd been to Japan. He'd confined his tastes to the West for far too long.

When she sat down, he sat up a little straighter, staring and trying to place where he'd seen her before.

She had large, brown eyes – not dark, but light, like her brown hair. Her skin was pale, but its tint was more pink than gold. As for clothing, she wore clothes more suited to a business interview (a severe pencil skirt and heavy shoes) than for an evening at the city's finest restaurant.

He quirked an eyebrow.

She didn't so much as blink.

He smiled.

"It's nice to meet you, Miss Fujioka. I'm glad you could take time out of your day to meet with me."

Still she did not smile. Her big, big eyes expressed doubt at his actual gladness.

He warmed to her. All the naïveté of these scholarship students – their frenzied handshakes and mega-watt smiles – began to wear on him. This one was, at least, wary. Not the first of her kind to know sense, the first to recognize danger, but he marveled at her for her rarity.

"It is a habit of mine to meet the students I aid in scholarship. A good way, I think, of constructing a connection between the human and the investment." He smiled coolly at what would normally be perceived as a joke. Fujioka Haruhi looked put-off. Good for her.

"It's nice to meet you, too," she said, in a voice so hollow that even an idiot would recognize it as a lie.

Kyouya caught the waiter's eye and nodded at him. The waiter asked what he might get for him.

"Lamb," Kyouya said, "rare. And another glass of wine."

"For the lady?"

Kyouya opened his mouth to order for her, but she cut in, almost nervously:

"A salad," she said, "and water, please."

Kyouya smiled a little to himself._ She's cheap, _he thought, _and careful_.And it amused him. The waiter screwed up his nose, almost imperceptibly.

"Japan is lovely this time of year," Kyouya says, making small talk, all the while taking a sadistic glee in her discomfort – not at him, for she is only _wary _of him, but at her surroundings.

"It is."

"Not as beautiful as in spring, though."

"Yes."

He takes another sip of his wine as he examines her, trying – wanting, for some reason – to wrench words from this blood pool's pink mouth.

"You must be well traveled, Mr. Ohtori," she says, obviously straining for something to throw into the ring. "You have a British accent and you seem fluent in written Japanese."

He is unable to hide his vanity. "I'm from Hungary, originally."

A long moment of a pause, then another strained piece of talk: "Is it nice therethis time of year?"

He remembers the fall of his homeland, his wife at his side, the gardens and the reds and colors. Most vaguely, he remembers the smell of fall before the coal chimneys of England and the metal of America and the overwhelming tang of blood in gutters took away his sense of smell entirely.

And then: _his wife. _

His eyes may widen imperceptibly, or else, his lips may part a millimeter, because it strikes him like a blow to the head:

The delicate bones of her jaw, the doubtful quirk of her polite smile, the small, thin fingers – all his wife's. From her coloring to the way she fidgeted, she stood before him, incarnate.

She fidgets, then, at the way he stares. He blinks and takes another sip of his wine.

Fujioka Haruhi.

_Not _her.

Now that the glaring recognition fades from his eyes, he sees about as many differences as similiarities. She's Oriental, with thin, short hair. And she looks at him with a kind of determination that only a twenty-first century woman could possess, the kind his wife displayed only infrequently (though, it nags at him, the determination had always been there).

He smiles at her determination and decides that she will be a good meal.

The food arrives, and she eats her salad in silence. He tries to choke down a few pieces of meat. It's not nearly rare enough.

She looks enviously over at his lamb, just for a moment, but he catches her glancing and she looks away.

He knows now that this petite thing is a glutton – her downfall - and it irritates him because he realizes it is another similarity. His wife loved food. Until she took

After the meal, they both reach for the bill. His hand falls on her warm one.

"Don't concern yourself with paying. I'm the one who insisted you come here. Allow me."

She looks conflicted, seeing logic and benefit in his argument, but also seeing a trap. "I'll pay my half."

He looks on, amused, as she scrapes up all the coins and one-dollar bills and counts them carefully, conscientious when it came to the foreign currency. An idea comes to him, and he fights to hide a smirk.

She pushs the pile toward him, wrinkling the linen table cloth as she did so. The jingling calls the eyes of nearby patrons to them, and Kyouya feels torn between a sigh and another smirk at her behavior.

Either way, he smiles, he's got her now.


End file.
